Owen and I still do the questions thing at night; not every night, but most. I have wondered why I haven’t been feverishly writing down the questions and responses we engage in. I have to think that while I still don’t really know why, my best guess is that I am somehow passive-agressively railing against the early 21C tendency to record everything. Admittedly, conversations between my six year old son and I will be intensely interesting – for both of us – 15 or 20 years down the road, but it does feel like robbing the present for the potential benefit of the future.
Last night’s question from Owen: Why is there wind?
Tonight’s question from Owen: How is paper made?
Our children are never ridiculed for any question they ever ask. Period. Ridicule can be manifested in a smile, and Owen is sensitive to… well, a lot of things. I give any question he or Finney ask the same weight as one a bank manager might ask me – and perhaps more. No, certainly more.
He is finding out about his world (and of course it is his world – Carrie and I are already on our way out of it from one point of view). What he asks about are things that interest him, and the questions reveal as much as they obscure. They tell me where his mind wanders during the day (have you ever tried asking a 6 year old what happened at school any given day?). They tell me, after asking him if he has a question and he promptly offering one up, that he rolls these wonderings through his mind all the time. He’s ready at a moment’s notice to figure stuff out. Questions help him do that. They help anyone, of course, but he’s 6 and working on big stuff while many of us gave that up sometime around 2nd year University.
Recent questions from Owen:
Why are there bad people?
Why is there government?
Why are there clouds?
Why do you work?
Try answering that last one without the obvious “put food on the table and pay the mortgage” response. He deserves more than that.